Those Brazilian scholars and their acolytes, who defend against any hint that racial inequality in Brazil might be an aspect of the racial state by saying that at least they do not classify races by hypo-descent as we truly unfair Americans do, really miss the point.

There really are not only differences in ways of classification but also whole other racial orders, such as the idea of “Latinity” which has a few vertientes. That is the really interesting point. And when “Spanish” is a race (as it was for Franco) that you can join by becoming a practicing Spaniard (sort of like a practicing Catholic), and that race is inclusive of various colors and origins, it becomes difficult to perceive other kinds of hierarchies.

An easier point to understand, at least for me, is that the Brazil/U.S. contrast is spurious and it is so for reasons I have not heard anyone else articulate: both countries recommend assimilation. In Brazil you can join mulatice or some other form of whiteness or non Blackness. In the United States you can integrate, which does not change your classification but does assimilate you.

My theory is that races are classified differently in different places, and racial meaning is differently formed; yet there is still a world system built around race that is one system, although complex and sometimes contradictory.

Secretos y Saberes

1. While writing here is an excellent exercise for my English style and for writing as such, it is bad for my style in Spanish. Therefore some posts may be in languages other than English.

2. Corybantic, rather anarchical and possibly Liangian, this blog is opposed to everything I find mean. It criticizes things you may hold dear. It resists authoritarianism and received ideas. It vaporizes Fascists.

3. This blog is a codex you have found. It speaks to one and all. But it also holds secrets and hides its face, for I who now perform the ancient text must adapt its words for modernity. I am a sculpted skull on a stela at Copán.